[HN Gopher] Why are so many people being hit with PS5 fines for ...
___________________________________________________________________
Why are so many people being hit with PS5 fines for 'counterfeit'
stamps?
Author : gnabgib
Score : 178 points
Date : 2024-03-28 21:55 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (www.thisismoney.co.uk)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.thisismoney.co.uk)
| nextos wrote:
| _" It is unclear at what point these 'counterfeit' stamps have
| entered circulation, and their source -- or whether they are
| genuine and Royal Mail's scanning technology is at fault."_
|
| Given the precedents from the
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Post_Office_scandal, I
| think the second option is plausible.
|
| My experience in the UK is that dysfunctional organizations try
| to hide issues by bullying their own customers.
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| It's a scandal engine that occasionally delivers mail. No
| accountability, no repercussions.
| matthewmacleod wrote:
| Royal Mail and the Post Office are two separate
| organisations.
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| I am aware. It seems, regardless of institution, that no
| one at these levels of UK public good can take
| responsibility. It is as if the apathy has been
| institutionalized in a declining nation state. Where and
| how do find someone who cares and the authority to do
| something about it?
|
| If you told me yet another UK institution had systemic
| issues (NHS?), I would not be surprised, and that is very
| sad. It should not be this hard to do better. Right? Or am
| I just an ignorant Yankee?
| RobotToaster wrote:
| Royal mail has been a privately owned corporation for
| some years now.
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| Ignorant Yankee behind the times it is. Much shame.
| Appreciate being corrected.
| devnullbrain wrote:
| >that occasionally delivers mail
|
| Roughly once every two weeks, here.
| bombcar wrote:
| Or it could be a bug in the printing, there have been cases
| before where things were accidentally duplicated that shouldn't
| have been.
|
| https://www.mycurrencycollection.com/blog/1-2013-new-york-du...
| nikdoof wrote:
| In the past six months I've had four letters returned to me
| because they went through the sort/scanner upside down and used
| the sender address on the CN22 as the destination address. I'd
| put money on it being a failure of technology.
| ThePowerOfFuet wrote:
| Try putting the CN22 on the back instead.
| quitit wrote:
| >My experience in the UK is that dysfunctional organizations
| try to hide issues by bullying their own customers.
|
| I noticed this from Royal Mail. I reached out to them multiple
| times regarding a scam carried out using one of their tracked
| products from an eBay purchase and they said there was nothing
| they could do about it. But there was something they could do,
| and it was already going on completely silently in the
| background.
|
| I later received a letter from Royal Mail stating that the
| delivery did in fact not take place, and with that I was able
| to claim a refund from eBay. However my interactions with Royal
| Mail were not reasonable:
|
| 1. They did not disclose that the matter would be looked into,
| instead they stated unequivocally that it would not and there
| was no way to escalate the matter. This meant that my plans
| were altered on account of assuming that the funds were lost.
|
| 2. They were unwilling to provide any official statement to
| eBay regarding the limited "tracking" available for their own
| product, and naturally eBay won't accept second-hand
| statements. If they were slightly flexible this would have
| resolved the dispute promptly - and I doubt I was the first
| person to fall victim to this scam, so some communication
| between eBay and Royal Mail would seem reasonable.
|
| 3. They gave no notice that they found in my favour and would
| be sending me a letter as evidence. I only received that mail
| by chance as I happened to book the same accomodation in a
| later visit, and this luckily coincided with that letter's
| arrival.
|
| The unhelpfulness, stonewalling and opaque investigation seem
| entirely designed to cover for their own shortcomings. They
| would have had location data for the signed delivery, and they
| would have immediately had visibility that this didn't match my
| address.
| renewiltord wrote:
| These guys can't get anything right. I'd assume by default that
| their software is broken.
| chrisjj wrote:
| The real breakage is further up the chain ...
| Ajay-p wrote:
| It is strange that a person would receive a fine for receiving a
| letter with a "counterfeit" stamp. That would make for a very
| nasty revenge operation - send your worst enemy letters with
| counterfeit stamps to cause them to incur a five pound fine.
| ct0 wrote:
| same goes for bad checks, the person cashing it pays a returned
| check fee!
| HackerLemon wrote:
| You don't have to pay it. It's only payable if you want to
| receive the letter.
| Leynos wrote:
| The problem is that there is no way of knowing what the
| letter is. All you get is a slip through your door saying an
| item of mail is waiting for you and has a PS5 fee to pay. If
| you're like me, you pay the fee, fearful that it might be
| something important.
| datascienced wrote:
| Yeah it could be a speeding fine caused by a faulty
| detector after all!
| dnh44 wrote:
| At my local depot they allow you to see what the item is
| before you decide to pay or not.
| toast0 wrote:
| From the article, sounds like the recipient can pay the fine
| and get the mail, or not pay the fine and not get the mail.
| Maybe it'll get returned to sender, for insufficient postage?
| Maybe it'll be destroyed?
| chrisjj wrote:
| It is not a fine. It is a fee for optional delivery.
| justinclift wrote:
| Ugh. It's kind of blackmail then. :(
|
| "Pay us $ (even though legally you don't have to),
| otherwise we'll be keeping and/or destroying your stuff".
| chrisjj wrote:
| Technically not blackmail.
|
| Extortion :)
| justinclift wrote:
| Ahhh, good point. :)
| bregma wrote:
| It may depend on what's in that envelope.
| pacaro wrote:
| It's unlikely that it will be returned to sender. In the UK
| it is uncommon to write the senders address on the mail
| piece, and even if a sender address is procided, how do you
| know that the sender information is accurate?
| jerrre wrote:
| next level operation:
|
| put your enemies' address as sender (not legal advice)
| kypro wrote:
| You pay the fine if want the post. You don't legally have to
| pay. Presumably it works like this because they can't always
| identify who sent the letter.
| chrisjj wrote:
| > Presumably it works like this because they can't always
| identify who sent the letter.
|
| Not to mention that this way targets the person that is far
| more likely to pay, and far less likely to challenge a false
| counterfeit charge.
| jonatron wrote:
| It's impossible to say if this was detecting counterfeits, or
| incorrectly flagged counterfeits, without more information. I'd
| like to point to my recent experience trying to buy a mask from
| Amazon: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39844229
| delichon wrote:
| If this is really about a fine for counterfeiting a stamp, isn't
| PS5 astonishingly low? In the US that's a serious federal felony
| with up to five years in prison.
|
| https://puryearlaw.com/2015/12/27/federal-counterfeit-postag...
| chrisjj wrote:
| It is not. "Fine" is misreporting.
| jcrawfordor wrote:
| The term "fine" seems confusing here. If you look at the form
| sticker, it seems apparent that PS5 is just the on-delivery
| postage rate for an unpaid item. Different postal services
| handle this differently, but it's not unusual that a mailpiece
| that's lacking sufficient postage will be delivered to the
| recipient if _they_ pay the postage, and it 's also not unusual
| to make that a higher rate to account for the extra work
| involved in notifying the recipient and collecting it. Under
| some postal systems you can do this totally intentionally by
| marking a mailpiece COD.
|
| Maybe Royal Mail really does call this a fine, but it seems
| like it's just a typical higher "postage due" rate, thus the
| still rather nominal amount. Paying is optional for the
| recipient, they could just ignore the notification and it won't
| be delivered.
|
| The use of this approach for counterfeit seems sort of unwise
| considering the accusation involved in counterfeit postage, the
| USPS returns the piece to the sender in that case. But the
| items on the sticker make me think that Royal Mail has a
| general bent towards offering delivery no matter what. USPS
| would also return to sender if there's no postage at all,
| assuming the piece doesn't indicate the postage should be paid
| by the recipient. But you can see that the PS5 sticker here is
| the same one used in that case.
|
| Sometimes the situation is complicated by postal policy, for
| example UPU policy for international mail tends to strongly
| prefer attempting to deliver a mailpiece over returning it, so
| "postage due" stickers seem more common on international mail
| (particularly since the international rates can be confusing
| and it's easier to accidentally underpay).
| adamm255 wrote:
| The issue is, the recipient is paying the fine.
|
| I send you a letter with a fake stamp, you pay.
|
| The PS5 is an inconvenience, something you'd pay while tutting
| "what is the world coming to".
|
| The sender is none the wiser.
|
| 7.3bn letters delivered in 22-23 (https://www.ofcom.org.uk/__da
| ta/assets/pdf_file/0032/272795/...)
|
| If 0.01% of that are tagged as counterfeit, that's PS3,650,000
| in fines.
| jimnotgym wrote:
| Makes me feel like sending a load of them to the Daily
| Mail...
| DaSHacka wrote:
| You kid, but I imagine this will quickly be abused by bad
| actors to harass victims of online doxxing as ordering
| pizzas and (in more serious cases) swatting is.
| 1jbdg wrote:
| You just don't accept the letter, nothing to pay then
| scotty79 wrote:
| Aren't public institution obligated to accept letters
| from the public?
| michaelmrose wrote:
| It's worse than that. They introduced new stamps with
| barcodes and let you trade in your old lawfully obtained
| postage for the new barcoded stuff. They are marking some of
| their own lawfully obtained stamps as counterfeit and by dint
| of doing so stealing from their citizenry.
|
| It's roughly analogous to having bought speed guns from an
| incompetent vendor which sometimes read 200 kph no matter
| what the speed and insisting their cops continue to use them
| and ticketing per normal because it would be very expensive
| to replace the guns.
| PontifexMinimus wrote:
| > They are marking some of their own lawfully obtained
| stamps as counterfeit and by dint of doing so stealing from
| their citizenry
|
| This is called "fraud" and in any properly-run country
| people would be doing long prison sentences for it.
|
| Sadly, the UK is not a properly-run country.
| labster wrote:
| What, you don't think the postal court run by the Post
| Office will rule against the Post Office? Come on,
| there's only a small chance of being sent to Rwanda in a
| crate if you file a case against them, hardly worth
| worrying about.
| RobotToaster wrote:
| Forging stamps is up to 10 years in the UK, it's considered the
| same as counterfeiting money.
|
| But I _think_ it has to be proven that it was intentional, so
| if the sender was simply scammed by someone selling fake stamps
| that wouldn 't be prosecutable.
| duxup wrote:
| I knew a guy whose hobby was drawing fake stamps on envelopes
| and mailing them.
|
| He said someone eventually tracked him down and he was just
| told to stop doing it.
| mauvehaus wrote:
| For today's lucky 10,000:
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/J._S._G._Boggs
| defrost wrote:
| Good article, worth the read.
|
| This caught my eye: Boggs was first
| arrested for counterfeiting in England in 1986, and was
| successfully defended by the human rights lawyer Geoffrey
| Robertson QC & Mark Stephens and acquitted.
|
| as the cases of Geoffrey Robertson are worth the rabbit
| hole, and the maintaining of transient accolades poses an
| update issue.
|
| I'll leave the QC -> KC edit for others and wonder how many
| dated QC's are on wikipedia and whether a QC who died
| before the Queen remains a QC or becomes a post mortem KC ?
| dmurray wrote:
| Surely it's correct to call him QC when writing about an
| event in 1986, but if it were in the present "Geoffrey
| Robertson KC wrote a recent memoir about his defence of
| Boggs...". This isn't mentioned in the Wikipedia style
| guide, as far as I can see, but for example the article
| on Princess Diana lists "spouse: Charles, Prince of Wales
| (later Charles III)".
|
| Transgenderism follows the opposite convention: once you
| transition to a new name and gender, you do so
| _retroactively_ and all existing publications about you
| become dated, inaccurate and offensive. But I think that
| 's the exception here in normal writing style.
| defrost wrote:
| I dare say, I wasn't sure how the QC | KC accolade was
| treated, but that does pass the sensible test.
|
| I note that: After being turned down by
| several leading lawyers, Dennis and Anderson secured the
| services of barrister and writer John Mortimer, QC
| (creator of the Rumpole of the Bailey series) who was
| assisted by his Australian-born junior counsel Geoffrey
| Robertson; Neville chose to represent himself. At the
| opening of the trial in June 1971 Mortimer stated that
| "... [the] case stands at the crossroads of our liberty,
| at the boundaries of our freedom to think and draw and
| write what we please".
|
| ~ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oz_(magazine)
|
| is on the money, Mortimer was a QC at the time (1971) and
| Robertson was yet to be appointed (1988).
| duxup wrote:
| I feel like a stamp... little different than money.
| coldtea wrote:
| > _In the US that 's a serious federal felony with up to five
| years in prison._
|
| For counterfeiting _A_ stamp? I guess in the US even breathing
| the wrong way is probably a serious federal felony.
|
| Land of the free, and all that...
| xnyan wrote:
| there are countries where it's not a serious crime to
| counterfeit postage? I think the penalty is double (up to 10
| years) in the United Kingdom for example.
| siva7 wrote:
| Yes, there are plenty. A serious crime requires serious
| damage in some countries so a single counterfeit won't tick
| that bar.
| B1FF_PSUVM wrote:
| 'De minimis non curat lex', as those very practical
| Romans put it
| pigeons wrote:
| I was going to reply, "Unum ex multis dica". It's always
| interesting when two people can see the same thing and
| come to opposite conclusions!
| boomboomsubban wrote:
| I doubt they ever prosecute anyone for counterfeiting _a_
| stamp, but if the law only forbid counterfeiting 100 stamps a
| counterfeiter would do 99 at a time.
| justinclift wrote:
| ... and it wouldn't be a crime, so what's the issue? :D
| coldtea wrote:
| > _if the law only forbid counterfeiting 100 stamps a
| counterfeiter would do 99 at a time._
|
| And by the second batch they'd have counterfeited 198, so I
| fail to see the problem...
| tadfisher wrote:
| That's how they nab you for structuring.
| boomboomsubban wrote:
| They hire someone to take each batch from them. So at
| best, you can only ever prosecute a fall guy, not the
| skilled counterfeiter.
|
| In essence, it's easier to make any counterfeiting
| illegal, and then not prosecute the person who once
| prints a picture of a stamp and tapes it to a letter.
| Trying to make counterfeiting legal in certain situations
| can be abusable.
| Joker_vD wrote:
| And so they get prosecuted for incitement, conspiracy and
| organized crime.
|
| Seriously, as a rule of thumb, none of those extremely
| simple loopholes you can come up in five seconds of
| thinking work: there people were before you, and they too
| could think (even though in case of lawmakers it can
| sometimes be hard to imagine that they can actually
| think).
| boomboomsubban wrote:
| If selling 99 stamps is legal, I'm not inciting them to
| crime, I'm selling them the maximum allowable amount that
| isn't a crime. Similar with conspiracy and organized
| crime.
|
| And yeah, these loopholes don't work because people tried
| them and now counterfeiting one stamp is illegal. That's
| my point.
| Dylan16807 wrote:
| Where did "at a time" come from?
| boomboomsubban wrote:
| As in "I counterfeit 99 stamps at a time then sell them.
| That esy I never break the law."
| boomboomsubban wrote:
| esy=way.
| coldtea wrote:
| Yes, the parents question is meant as "where did the idea
| that doing 99 'at a time' would somehow bypass a law
| about >= 100 being illegal comes from?".
| boomboomsubban wrote:
| How would having 99 counterfeit stamps violate that law?
|
| I think you/the other person (assuming that's what their
| question meant) took it as "each page printed only has
| 99, but they're still printing multiple pages per run"
| while I meant "each run has 99 stamps, then they
| distribute them."
|
| _edit_ or you think the law could be based on how many
| counterfeit stamps they had made, not possession. Dunno,
| we 're really spending too much time attacking my
| bullshit hypothetical that was meant to say "make it hard
| for the law to have a loophole."
| rtpg wrote:
| I think it's important to internalize that stamps are like a
| form of currency[0]. Like you stick it on the envelope to pay
| the shipping fee. There are tax stamps/revenue stamps which
| are used to pay for things in a way that is hard for the fee
| collector themselves to steal.
|
| I applied for a visa-related thing a month or so ago. The fee
| was 6000 yen, so I stuck 2 3000 yen stamps on the application
| form. I had paid the application fee, the money can't be
| stolen by the public servant taking the application form
| (well, not easily, at least, I'm sure there are sleight of
| hands), and the purchasing of the stamp happens at a trusted
| third party that could commit fraud but is heavily
| incentivized not to (on account of me being able to directly
| cite where I bought it, and the agency knowing who I am).
|
| [0]: Pedants who want to say it isn't or that it's _exactly_
| a form of currency: please go away
| jldugger wrote:
| >I think it's important to internalize that stamps are like
| a form of currency[0].
|
| So much so that the original Ponzi scheme involved
| arbitraging the price of stamps via international reply
| coupons (and then promptly got way out of hand).
| adamm255 wrote:
| Royal Mail needs to be slapped with a massive Freedom of
| Information request. We need to see how many fines have been
| paid.
|
| We had one of these a year and a half ago, similar story. Seemed
| BS back then, so this could be a big problem.
| matthewmacleod wrote:
| Royal Mail, as a private (well... public) company, is not
| subject to FOIA requests.
| lmm wrote:
| They're a creature of the state, you can't practically opt
| out of Royal Mail. If they're not subject to FOIA then they
| need to be.
| adamm255 wrote:
| Also the legislation splitting the Post Office from Royal
| Mail and privatising it happening in 2011/12 just looks
| even more shady in light of all the Post Office stuff.
| adamm255 wrote:
| Well... that's convenient. The more you know. Isn't
| privatisation great!
| RobotToaster wrote:
| While it would be completely unsurprising if this is yet another
| royal mail cockup, there's been loads of suspiciously cheap
| stamps all over places like ebay, so it's possible people are
| just getting scammed.
| andrewaylett wrote:
| The stamps have "unique" codes, but a genuine counterfeit must
| still have a code -- and to be useful it must duplicate the code
| on a real stamp.
|
| If the counterfeit gets used first, the stamp is marked as spent,
| and when the unlucky purchaser of the real stamp tries to use it,
| they're told _theirs_ is "counterfeit" because it's flagged as
| "used" in the database?
| chrisjj wrote:
| That would be dumb. Nothing prevents attempted reuse of a
| genuine stamp.
| taylorfinley wrote:
| Sorry, what about that would be dumb? Attempted reuse is
| exactly what would be prevented by scanning the barcode and
| seeing it had already been used.
|
| This is exactly why gift cards have scratch-off material
| covering their secret keys, otherwise folks would just take a
| picture of the next card in the stack, wait for it to be
| funded, and then use it before the recipient does.
|
| edit: And would you look at that, you can buy stamp sheets on
| Amazon.co.uk, and users have helpfully submitted a bunch of
| photos with barcodes visible.
| chrisjj wrote:
| > Sorry, what about that would be dumb?
|
| Reused barcode does not mean counterfeit.
|
| > Attempted reuse is exactly what would be prevented by
| scanning the barcode and seeing it had already been used.
|
| Sure, but the alleged crime here is not attempted reuse. It
| is counterfeiting - as shown in the pic of the Royal Mail
| fee request label.
| taylorfinley wrote:
| The barcode in the article decodes to "JGB
| S11221017031011395940006622112101 BC046285E760466C01" if anyone
| fancies having a crack at making a stamp keygen.
| Leynos wrote:
| I didn't actually realize one could fit so much into such a
| small barcode.
|
| I do wonder if this now means it is in theory possible to
| track items sent by letter post.
| kuschku wrote:
| It is. Other european mail services, e.g. DHL, have been
| offering tracking for _every_ new stamp for a while now.
| Ekaros wrote:
| We forget just how automated sorting of mail now is. Only
| probable manual part is by the person doing delivery, and
| that is just for their own convenience. Everything else is
| automated, with few hard to read addresses going through
| manual sorting. Where they are tracked too.
| 1letterunixname wrote:
| Likely, they use some authenticated hash like HMAC SHA-256
| with a schedule of randomly chosen keys added periodically.
| (Can't really rotate out keys once generated.) GFL reversing
| the algorithm AND any working key.
|
| Also, an "is it used" database has to be kept to prevent an
| analog replay attack by reusing the same barcode. The most
| efficient way to keep track of used stamps would be a bloom
| filter. A poor implementation would lead to false positives,
| and mailers being accused of fraud. It also has should be
| highly reliable, highly available, and geographically
| disperse.
| rightbyte wrote:
| There was this computer system scandal when lots of post
| masters were convicted of fraud even though it was known the
| computer system was buggy. So I wouldn't assume too much
| competence involved.
| rkangel wrote:
| That scandal was the Post Office, which is a completely
| separate organisation from the Royal Mail.
| lesserknowndan wrote:
| Where do these people go to pay these fines?
| pomatic wrote:
| You get a link to the RM website, pay on line. If you
| don't pay, you don't get to receive the letter/packet
| involved.
| michaelmrose wrote:
| If this is a problem the UK government should ask for their
| money back and the developer should ask their college for their
| money back. The only useful property of the barcode is
| verifiability and its not hard to avoid this problem.
| sentientslug wrote:
| If that was true it wouldn't be marked as counterfeit, the
| other checkbox would be marked for "already used"
| seabass-labrax wrote:
| Here's an excellent blog post explaining the anti-forgery
| features of Royal Mail stamps:
|
| http://www.jolschimke.de/briefmarken-und-ganzsachen/erste-ge...
|
| What strikes me most is how crude the imitation stamps are - most
| aren't even trying to emulate the genuine printing techniques.
| It's all quantity over quality, trying to minimise the cost of
| producing counterfeit stamps whilst hoping to sell bulk loads of
| them to naive (or unscrupulous) customers.
|
| It sounds like the biggest problem is the conflict of interest
| that the Royal Mail has, since they currently get to keep the
| fine payments as revenue. They have no direct incentive to stop
| the sale of counterfeit stamps, let alone deal with a tiny
| proportion of false-positives from their scanning machines.
|
| Perhaps the answer is for the Royal Mail to be required to
| forfeit the revenue from fake postage fines, but be absolved of
| the responsibility to deliver these letters. Therefore, false
| positives in detection would simply be losses for their
| reputation, and they can decide, as a private company, whether or
| not this is an issue for their shareholders.
|
| Personally, I would go the other way, requiring that the Royal
| Mail _always_ deliver letters with fake stamps without issuing
| fines, but have proper independent investigations into both the
| origin of the alleged fakes and the reliability of the scanning
| machines. This isn 't going to happen without an Act of
| Parliament, unfortunately.
| pavel_lishin wrote:
| > _What strikes me most is how crude the imitation stamps are -
| most aren 't even trying to emulate the genuine printing
| techniques._
|
| Of course. Their goal isn't to fool the post office; it's to be
| just good enough to sell to buyers.
| alibarber wrote:
| Rather like how a person can lose their bitcoin stash by
| accidentally sharing a picture of a private key, can stamps now
| be 'destroyed' by printing out reproductions of the barcode onto
| bits of paper and depositing them in postboxes?
| martinald wrote:
| Think the comments are missing the point it a bit - it was Royal
| Mail _themselves_ who provided these "counterfeit" stamps.
| michaelmrose wrote:
| I like the theory someone else offered of other people "using
| up" the numbers o pre-existing stamps which would be feasible
| if the numbers were predictable.
| datascienced wrote:
| What, another "computer says no; you is criminal" connected with
| Royal Mail?
| edward28 wrote:
| Why let a pesky human get in the way of justice.
| 1letterunixname wrote:
| In Soviet Britain, the computer is always right, data is
| always perfect, and software bugs don't exist... and
| privately prosecute you.
| dhosek wrote:
| What caught my attention was that the first-class mail rate in
| the UK is PS1.35 which is about $1.70 at current exchange rates.
| In contrast, in the US a first-class stamp is $0.68 (I buy
| forever stamps in bulk so I was surprised to discover it had
| gotten that high). The USPS really is a bargain.
| vinay427 wrote:
| Yes, Royal Mail tends to be far more expensive than USPS for
| letters and smaller parcels, including internationally (e.g. UK
| to US costs far more than US to UK), but they have relatively
| reasonable pricing on medium-sized parcels in my experience.
|
| It definitely is apparent which is the private company based on
| their pricing schemes, even besides the more consumer-facing UK
| Post Office locations that are almost entirely franchised and
| often operate as a small convenience store, etc.
| NeoTar wrote:
| The prices have been increasing above inflation for years,
| but especially in the last few years - e.g. in 2001 a first
| class stamp cost 0.27 GBP (0.49 in 2024), and even in 2019 in
| was 0.70 GBP (0.86 in 2024).
| lb1lf wrote:
| In fairness, though, mail volume must have plummeted as
| email and electronic invoicing became a thing.
|
| My receiving a letter by actual mail now usually means I
| have forgotten to set up e-invoicing for a service I
| subscribe to.
|
| Yet, most of the infrastructure required to handle the
| (vastly reduced) volume of mail remains.
|
| (I would be surprised if an increasing amount of packages
| being shipped due to online shopping offsets the reduction
| in letters mailed)
| M2Ys4U wrote:
| Royal Mail was also privatised in 2013, which goes a
| _long_ way to explaining the price hike.
| gnopgnip wrote:
| Postcrossing maintains a list of international postcard costs
| by country. Going by cheapest for food, the US is #20, UK is
| about #100. Bahamas is the cheapest.
|
| https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1leBjOXKNneuPVZt2PRnI...
| michaelt wrote:
| Bear in mind the services are kinda different.
|
| In the UK, 93% of first class mail is delivered next day,
| including Saturdays, and you can often post things as late as
| 4pm.
|
| Whereas USPS first class mail is delivered in 1-5 business
| days. Admittedly, in a much larger country.
| dhosek wrote:
| I think though, that the percentage of USPS first class mail
| delivered in 1 day (including Saturday) is probably pretty
| close to 93% since a significant fraction of mail will be
| within narrow regions (I would guess that the DC-Boston area
| itself accounts for at least half of first-class mail).
|
| Back in the Netflix DVDs by mail days, it was rare that it
| took more than a day for the DVD to get to or from the
| Netflix warehouse (when they started shuttering warehouses in
| the last few years of service, that went up to two days each
| way for a DVD from Chicago to Columbus, Ohio).
|
| I'd also point out that mailbox pickup in the U.S. varies by
| the mailbox, but many of the ones near me have late afternoon
| (3-4p) pickups and if I go to the mailbox by the local post
| office it's 5.30p. I can even take it to the downtown Chicago
| post office for a 9p pickup.
| EVa5I7bHFq9mnYK wrote:
| Especially considering the average distance between two
| addresses is several times longer.
| Chris_Newton wrote:
| I don't know whether I should post this as it may be an ongoing
| case, but not so long ago I sent off my old stamps to the
| official "swap out" service to have them replaced by the new
| barcoded ones. A few days later, I did indeed receive equivalent
| new stamps back -- in an envelope that had clearly been tampered
| with, being roughly cut open all down one side and having the
| paperwork accompanying the stamps obviously bent and having been
| pushed back in awkwardly.
|
| I immediately contacted Royal Mail via their online system and
| noted the problem and my concern that this could mean the stamps
| had been replaced with fakes before reaching me. I asked if there
| was any way I could verify that they were legitimate before I
| used them.
|
| A few days later, I received a bizarre email back from someone at
| Royal Mail, saying they were sorry to hear that I wasn't happy
| with their response (what response?!) and can certainly
| understand my frustration but we are not able to progress any
| further (than what?!), along with various other words that seemed
| designed to try to appease me while not actually saying anything
| of substance, and a recommendation to contact some other part of
| Royal Mail, which I may yet do.
|
| It was a surreal experience, but having been prompted to do it by
| seeing several reports of people who'd sent their stamps in and
| either never received the replacements or had problems with them,
| and having received such an obviously tampered delivery, with the
| entire process from collecting the stamps from my local post box
| to delivering the replacements to my home being under the control
| of Royal Mail, I can't say I was particularly reassured by the
| response so far.
|
| I haven't yet tried to send anything using the new stamps...
| 2-3-7-43-1807 wrote:
| well ... it's the royal mail which happens to be identical to
| the royal mail from the post office scandal. that's about the
| reassurance you got to expect.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Post_Office_scandal
| 1letterunixname wrote:
| I was just about to write this.
|
| If you can't make money by criminalizing the service
| providers, find new ways to criminalize the act of sending a
| letter on the demand side.
|
| Brilliant! ;@]
|
| Perhaps:
|
| 1. Deregulation and privatization don't work well for some
| critical services. The BPO should be re-regulated as a
| government department.
|
| 2. Abolish private criminal prosecution, as only the CPS
| should be allowed to bring criminal indictments.
| graemep wrote:
| There is a good argument against 2. - it means people the
| CPS do not want to prosecute become above the law. Private
| prosecutions are a mechanism for prosecuting people the
| establishment does not want to prosecute.
|
| The CPS can already stop a particular private prosecution -
| take it over and then drop it.
|
| I agree with 1. The Royal Mail is a de facto monopoly for
| sending letters (less so for parcels).
| retube wrote:
| The Royal Mail and the Post Office are not the same thing!
| They are completely separate businesses. The Fujitsu/sub-post
| master scandal has nothing to do with the Royal Mail.
| tgv wrote:
| Wikipedia explicitly says:
|
| Post Office Limited
|
| From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
|
| (Redirected from Post Office Ltd)
|
| Not to be confused with Royal Mail.
| 2-3-7-43-1807 wrote:
| thanks, just wanted to add this.
| Dyac wrote:
| While they aren't the same thing now, they were up until
| 2011. The Horizon Post Office scandal began before in about
| 1999.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Postal_Services_Act_2011
| bscphil wrote:
| The article credits a docuseries I've never heard of for
| making this a widely known issue:
|
| > A four-part television drama, Mr Bates vs the Post Office,
| was broadcast on ITV in January 2024, after which the scandal
| became a major news story and political issue.
|
| I swear I read some long form journalism on this issue years
| ago. Anyone know what I might have found? For the Brits who
| have previously heard of this scandal, did you know about it
| prior to January of this year?
| spuz wrote:
| It was already a major news story and political issue
| before the ITV documentary. The documentary just made it
| bigger.
| snthd wrote:
| Computer Weekly, 11 May 2009, _Bankruptcy, prosecution and
| disrupted livelihoods - Postmasters tell their story_
|
| https://www.computerweekly.com/news/2240089230/Bankruptcy-
| pr...
|
| >A seventh postmaster, Alan Bates, refused to sign his
| weekly accounts, saying it would have made him liable for
| any losses. He has called for a public inquiry.
| veltas wrote:
| Some mail machines cut thick or oversized envelopes by accident
| sometimes. So this might not have been tampered with.
|
| The right way to deal with anything you receive by mail is to
| return to sender, as long as it has a return address. Cross out
| your address, clearly write RTS on the front and in small write
| e.g. "item not sealed on arrival / tampering" or something,
| then stick in a post box. The sender has more recourse to deal
| with issues in transit anyway. Generally refuse anything sent
| that arrives like this.
| Chris_Newton wrote:
| Unfortunately, in this case the item was delivered by Royal
| Mail themselves and left in our mail box, so there was no
| opportunity to do anything like that.
|
| I might have bought the idea of a mechanical issue causing
| the opening if it had been a clean cut and the contents had
| been otherwise undisturbed, but with a very rough tear and
| the contents having apparently been shoved back into the
| envelope, it seems rather less likely.
| CapstanRoller wrote:
| >I might have bought the idea of a mechanical issue causing
| the opening if it had been a clean cut and the contents had
| been otherwise undisturbed
|
| When an envelope gets jammed in a sorting machine and some
| postal worker has to quickly clear the jam, stuff the
| contents back, and restart the machine, what you receive
| will look like a complete mess.
| Chris_Newton wrote:
| There are certainly other plausible explanations for what
| I received. If there were some way I could check those
| stamps were legitimate, the question would be academic
| anyway.
|
| The whole process is pretty daft if you think about it,
| though. Many of us had perfectly good stamps before.
| Royal Mail decided not to honour them -- itself an
| ethically dubious policy, given how those stamps had been
| marketed and sold -- and effectively forced us to swap
| them out.
|
| To enable that, they set up a system where you had to
| send them old stamps collectively worth up to (IIRC)
| PS200 without any verifiable proof of what you'd actually
| sent, in an envelope clearly recognisable as containing
| that type of stamps. Then they'd send you back
| replacement stamps, also in a clearly recognisable
| envelope, which ironically _should_ now be voidable in
| the event of a problem, but evidently without any
| willingness on their part to actually do so. For as long
| as I can remember, the public have been advised never to
| send cash by post, so the postal service forcing everyone
| to send a cash substitute in clearly identifiable
| packaging both ways was an... interesting... strategy.
|
| In a surprise to seemingly no-one except Royal Mail,
| there are now widespread reports of the clearly
| identifiable, untraceable, fungible value tokens going
| missing on the way in or their replacements themselves
| being replaced by counterfeits on the way back. There
| also seems to be a not-at-all-dodgy secondary market now,
| where you can buy the aforementioned replacement tokens
| for less than their "face value".
|
| However, based on my experience, Royal Mail don't seem to
| think there is any problem here. Based on reports such as
| the one we're discussing today, a significant number of
| innocent people might already be out some extra money as
| a result, and that money seems to be ending up with Royal
| Mail. A cynic might think someone had set up a scheme
| openly inviting theft and counterfeiting, forced a
| country full of people to use that scheme or lose money,
| ignored the obvious problems even when they were
| explicitly reported, and then directly profited from the
| criminal activity.
| veltas wrote:
| So there's no return address?
| Chris_Newton wrote:
| There actually is a return address on the back of the
| envelope that was open. However, given the story so far,
| it seems remarkably generous to trust that anything sent
| back there would firstly arrive at all, secondly result
| in a valid replacement for the affected stamps being
| sent, and thirdly result in that valid replacement
| reaching us properly.
|
| (For avoidance of doubt, in my previous comment, I meant
| that we had no opportunity to refuse the delivery.)
| tim333 wrote:
| It's surprisingly easy to get fake ones on ebay for any
| criminals out there wanting to do a swap. Here for example
| https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/266403486260
| rvba wrote:
| Few things come to my mind:
|
| 1) There is a general batch of stamps and also a second batch,
| that is used to exchange "old" for "new" stamps. The second batch
| either contains duplicate numbers, or is not activated in the
| post system at all -> so those get marked as counterfeit
|
| 2) The barcode system has no error correction -> the scanners
| just read the codes "as is", without any sort of error correction
| / verification if they were read correctly. The incorrect numbers
| (wrong reading) are then marked as counterfeit
|
| 3) Incorrect readings vs some generic "list of stamps that were
| used" -> fake (?) duplicates marked by the system.
| PHGamer wrote:
| why do we need to track stamps. seriously.
| kazinator wrote:
| > _penalty for those who receive (and accept) mail posted using
| one_
|
| Insane!
|
| Britain imitating Monty Python.
| zbyszek wrote:
| Monty Python imitated Britain first.
| kazinator wrote:
| Well, yes, and art did life, more generally.
| switch007 wrote:
| I'm curious if this started/accelerated when they switched to
| only accepting super special stamps that only their super special
| machine can determine whether they're genuine and unused? That
| would sure be a coincidence.
|
| The fee was increased recently too I believe
|
| This definitely needs investigating properly and determining if
| we have another Post Office-like scandal on our hands.
| jlarcombe wrote:
| from my own experience, yes it did (never before the change and
| twice since)
| 2-3-7-43-1807 wrote:
| knew an artist (Germany) who would paint beautiful fantasy stamps
| for letters. not a crime and it often went through.
| matthewmorgan wrote:
| I'm amazed how they managed to bring in barcoded stamps without a
| peep from anyone about privacy. Sending a letter anonymously is
| now impossible.
| pxeger1 wrote:
| Well that's not really true. It's not like cash is
| deanonynising because of the serial numbers. You can still get
| stamps on a grey market or send someone else to get them for
| you, and I'm sure they're sold in lots of places that don't
| have CCTV. The postmark would always have identified the
| approximate source location, it's just a bit more precise now.
| kevinventullo wrote:
| _It's not like cash is deanonynising because of the serial
| numbers._
|
| Aren't there cases where bank robbers were caught after the
| fact using knowledge of the serial numbers of the stolen
| bills?
| graemep wrote:
| You can keep your privacy, but most people will not bother.
| Most people will buy stamps with a card (or phone) payment so
| there is a complete chain of identify.
|
| The aim is mass surveillance so a few people going to the
| trouble of avoiding it is not a problem. True, it is meta
| data (not letter contents) but we know that is pretty
| powerful by itself.
|
| I do mean it is the aim - they never really explained what
| the real advantages of doing it for, and I suspect there is
| pressure from the security services who are accustomed to
| seeing most communications (or at least most meta data) to
| seal what they see as a hole in data collection.
| tim333 wrote:
| Using cash to buy them is not hard and the odds of anyone
| going through the CCTV is low unless you are going to post
| anthrax to the PM or something. I imagine the main reason
| to do it was to make it harder to use fake stamps, although
| there may be some tracking going on.
| graemep wrote:
| That is not the point. This is about mass surveillance so
| what matters is what most people do.
|
| > I imagine the main reason to do it was to make it
| harder to use fake stamps
|
| it was never put forward as a reason IIRC. How common are
| forged stamps in the first place, to make it worthwhile
| rtpg wrote:
| When you send a letter, it's usually stamped by the post office
| you are sending it from, so you already gotta do a bit of work
| to stay anonymous when sending things out. And in the CCTV-
| loving land of the brits, I gotta imagine there's cameras on
| every postbox in the country
|
| You now have to be more careful about buying the stamps
| themselves though. You could make a stock of them and not use
| them for a year or so (not like CCTV footage lasts more than a
| week).
| IanCal wrote:
| The barcode does not link to your identity.
| scotty79 wrote:
| It links to identity of whoever purchased them with credit
| card. Or whoever stood in front of the camera when
| transaction for these stamps was registered.
| IanCal wrote:
| > It links to identity of whoever purchased them with
| credit card.
|
| How do you think this happens? The codes are not scanned at
| the shop.
|
| > when transaction for these stamps was registered.
|
| Where is this registered?
| robk wrote:
| I'd bet money in a forensic scenario they could look up
| the batch and then estimate the sequence and thus date of
| sale and pull the post office cctv footage.
| fifteen1506 wrote:
| I think most people are missing the point here.
|
| Why, for Christ's sake, is the onus of verifying the stamps put
| on the customers?
|
| The Royal Mail created the problem. Don't give them money.
|
| Otherwise bureaucracy and Kafkaesque issues will increase in the
| private and public sector.
|
| PS: not from UK
| Jochim wrote:
| This happened to me. My employer sent me a card and it was marked
| counterfeit.
|
| I raised a complaint and was basically told to go fuck myself.
| Theodores wrote:
| Several years ago I bought a box of small toy Easter chicks and
| sent them in lots of envelopes over a period of a few weeks to my
| mother, as if they were 'migrating', getting workmates to write
| the labels and send them so they would have different postmark
| towns. The idea was for them to be anonymous. Some had several
| chicks in the envelopes.
|
| They kept arriving at my mother's and provided much amusement,
| with all but one of them arriving. I also played silly games to
| keep the postman on his toes, sometimes leaving out the postcode
| (zip) or putting other typos in the address.
|
| After the migration I visited my mum and she had the chicks
| everywhere, quite a collection.
|
| Then, about three weeks later, she had one of those cards meaning
| she would need to visit the depot. So she went, saw the envelope
| and knew what it was. In this envelope the chick was standing up
| rather than laying flat, to make the envelope too large for
| standard letter rate, hence the fine. She paid up.
|
| After hearing this tale I realised I had dodged about 57 bullets,
| for any of the envelopes could have ended up too large for the
| letter rate.
|
| At the time the post was affordable, with it not costing PS1.25 a
| letter. The stunt would have easily cost me PS100 had I wished to
| repeat it this year. I would have also run the gauntlet of the
| fake-forged-stamp malarkey, with it randomly costing my mother
| PS5 just because the Post Office deemed their own stamps-with-QR-
| codes fraudulent.
|
| It looks like I won't be using the post for a while, which is a
| pity.
| robk wrote:
| Well after the first time you just ignore the post cards
| wouldn't you? Easy way to handle returns too for sellers who
| can't cancel an order.
| ryukoposting wrote:
| I'll defer to Occam's Razor and say that the Mail probably has a
| machine that's a bit buggy or imperfect.
|
| The US Postal Service processed 116 billion parcels in 2023[1].
| If they had counterfeit stamp detectors that gave false positives
| 0.0001% of the time, that's still 116,000 bogus fines per year.
| And the engineers might have no way to reproduce the glitch,
| because it's so improbable.
|
| [1]: https://www.statista.com/statistics/320234/mail-volume-of-
| th...
| EVa5I7bHFq9mnYK wrote:
| It's not a fine - you are not going to jail for not paying it.
| throwanem wrote:
| Putting sub-postmasters in prison for someone else's theft looks
| pretty played out at this point, so I suppose this must be the
| new grift.
| karaterobot wrote:
| What's interesting to me is that the meaning of 'counterfeit' is
| being shifted. Counterfeit does not mean actually counterfeit, it
| means 'we couldn't process this stamp', which is a different
| thing altogether.
|
| I guess that either the Royal Mail's system is failing to read
| the bar code correctly, or it's encountering a bar code it's
| already seen before, and assuming it must be malicious. But in
| the latter case, there's no basis for saying the second use of
| the code is the counterfeit and not the first. That is, apart
| from doing actual forensic analysis on the stamp, which my guess
| is they are not doing--not in every case at least.
|
| If someone called me a counterfeiter, or even just said I was
| benefiting from counterfeiting, I'd be pretty angry. Especially
| if I found out they were accusing me without any evidence,
| without doing any diligence beforehand, and possibly as a
| consequence of their own error.
| LorenPechtel wrote:
| I think you're nailing it--some black hat has figured out the
| encoding and is making fake stamps. Same as gift card draining.
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2024-03-29 23:02 UTC)